Beginnings

Probably the first observable fact about the reality of art would be the presence of cave paintings and carved figurines at the sites where pre-historic human existence has been found. What the mentality of those men was is hard to know, probably impossible at this time, but they obviously thought of more than food and shelter. An animal with a full tummy that is not being chased goes to sleep or maybe plays by running around and chasing something. But these men in their caves were drawing and carving, and possibly even playing flutes. What kind of thoughts must one have to choose those actions? How would he even know to do them? If hunting is prompted by hunger, which is a sensation that comes from the body when it needs more energy supply, which in turn the brain interprets and commands an action in order to satisfy the sensation, what happens in a mind to prompt a decision to pick up a piece of charcoal and press it onto a surface in different directions until the marks it leaves resemble the animals that the man sees with his eyes outside? And to make things even more interesting, what makes him shape things that he hasn’t seen with his eyes – like a human body with a lion head?

Most texts on this subject and probably the majority of the general public would say that the cave man painted because of his humanity, and a lion-headed human was birthed because of the man’s imagination. But what are those things exactly? And how did they come about in the first place, when there seems to be no precedent?